Portfolio

What is Ascension?

Ascension is the result of 12 weeks of production, through a collaboration of NAD and UQAC students to produce a playable vertical slice of a game based on mechanics designed the previous semester.

Ascension is a technical platforming title where the player must navigate hazardous fantasy environments to reach the top of the mountain, and possibly reach Valhalla.

My share of the work:

My tasks for this project were varied, but mostly consisted of:

  • Custom rig for the player character.
  • Dynamic shader system for Death and Cinematic elements.
  • Physics setup for the character as well as the clothing simulation.
  • Rigging and animation of multiple props.

The biggest challenge I faced on this project was to handle the character dynamic features. It was a great learning experience in Unreal 4's handling of them on a custom rig specifically, as the documentation was sparse and it involved a lot of trial and error. I am happy to report that getting my hands dirty in this matter did pay off!

Ascension
Character Controls
Character Controls

Brief overview of the animation controls.

Rig - Under the Hood.
Rig - Under the Hood.

This flashy mess is all that drives this character, as a rule of thumb, the colors of the helpers and bones is related to the features.

Blue: FK, Orange: IK, Green: Right side, Purple: Left side. Other colors are for their own features.

Export Skeleton
Export Skeleton

This is the skeleton that is exported to the engine, it is constrained to the rest of the rig to prevent conflicts, it holds the character skin and also doubles as a Motion Capture rig. I can pull the Motion Builder data from this rig and reapply it to the controllers.

Effects - Shaders
Effects - Shaders

A few of the effects that were required for the game.

A "myhthical dissolve" when the player would die and respawn at the last checkpoint.

A frost that would gradually cover the player when it would go through blizzard areas.

Animation tests.

Those tests were my own creation, they have been used to debug the rig and test a few features.

The Team:

Animators
Antoine Demers
Vanessa Roy

Character Artist
Raphaëlle Deslandes

Concept Art
Raphaëlle Deslandes

Level Designer
Janick Fortin
Joëlle Landry

Game Designer
Guillaume Couture

Level Artists
François Grégoire
Weidi Kang
Miguel Hernandez
Louis-Michel Lebeau
Leo Ferland-Dallaire
Nabil El Biad

Technical Animator
Gabrielle Marcheterre

Programming
Frédéric Bolduc
Mikaël Senneville
Bernard Audebert
Alexis Lessard